@RadicalRoots23

6 months ago

Good to see this. It is odd that the 80s indie scene has not been focused on more in terms of documentaries, drama and books. There has not been that much on it so far. I think that in itself tells us something about the nature of the scene/type/people. I was 16 in 1986 in Scotland when i started getting into all this, and Scotland was one of the key places for this music and style, obviously, especially Glasgow. I considered making a documentary about it myself quite a while back, after making a few documentary films on the mod/1960s scene ('New Mod Generation', 2000, 'Mod Originals', 2003 and 'Ready Steady Sew', 2004). But i felt it was still too close to me then...perhaps i could try it again now, 20 years later. This here is about the more well known bands, and a specific style of the music then....but a wider range of less known bands should be considered in another documentary, including The Clouds, The Thanes, Talula Gosh, The Pastels, the June Brides, McCarthy, the Soup Dragons, Spaceman 3, the Shop Assistants, The Stairs, The Vaselines, and a whole bunch even rarer bands... Also there should be a focus on the general people into this scene, their haircuts, the 1960s influence (which was very large but not mentioned here almost at all), the focus on retro fashion style from charity shops (a significant sociological thing of rejecting modern fashion and materialism)...and something that is very 'big' now but at that time was a very subculture focus, and touched on in this documentary: a mixing of gender images and behaviour, since the men into this indie scene were distinguished by a feminine appearance and a rejection of macho male stereotypes (for which they often got a lot of abuse from more macho guys then)... and the women into it had a very active part, doing fanzines and playing in bands and (in Glasgow anyway) being very spiky and ballsy. Again, its surprising considering how this gender fluidity is such a thing now that these 80s indie style is not a bigger influence on how people talk about it now. Plus at the time I never called the scene shoegazing or twee.

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